Cuer

Here's what's available right now from the NPCs in Dalaran:

The tokens for tier7-10 hands and chest are sold for Emblems of Heroism (the kind that come from 10-man entry raids, and heroics.)



The tokens for tier7-25 shoulders and legs are sold for Emblems of Valor (the kind that come from 25-man entry raids.)


So, at this point one can get 4 pieces of the various levels of tier7 (with shared 4-piece set bonus) without ever spending DKP or whatever from raiding, although it would certainly take a lot of 25 man raids to get that many Emblems of Valor.

There is the possibility that this is all just for beta testing. As shown in the second picture, you can currently purchase all 5 pieces of armor of the Hateful Gladiator arena set for Emblems of Valor; the uncommon quality sets can be purchased with Emblems of Heroism. Unless they're suddenly going to let people purchase high quality PVP gear with PVE tokens, this is just a placeholder to spread that around in the beta. It's possible that exchanging the Emblems for tier7 set tokens is the same, although that seems a bit more likely to stay in for live.

 

JulianMaiev

The clear solution: Charge for badges.

Seriously.

 

Malleus

What exactly do you mean by "auction" here? I'm assuming you mean a system where raiders accumulate a DKP-equivalent in the course of play but expend it through bidding rather than paying a fixed fee.

If so, it's quite possible to shard useful loot in such a system, if everyone who can use it has no DKP. My guild uses a system like that and I recall it happened to us once, when a Druid idol dropped and the only Druid present had just spent to their negative DKP cap. Generally the system only falls down when it comes to relics and spellpower plate, but still.

 

Akka

I think (and somehow hope :p) that it won't stay in for live.
While completing set has been a heachache for quite some time in the past (hello MC/BWL), with heavy RNG dependance and lots of sharding and frustration, this has been quite lightened with the introduction of tokens. Not only there is much greater flexibilité in them, but they also now drop by three for 25 people, rather than a single one not too long ago.
As such, the RNG influence has been considerably lessened (even though it's still not perfect), and set pieces aren't anymore the "hard-to-get" slot. On the contrary, spectific non-set drops are now the ones being anxiously waited for (Dragonspine Trophy, anyone ?).

Badge rewards, as such, are much more logical as a band-aid for such non-set spectific drops (weapons, trinkets, and so on) which can elude a unlucky player for a while. They may allow such player striken with a bad RNG streak, to still have a "consolation prize" through buying items after a while.

If Blizzard wish to really soften even further the irritating dependance on RNG, they could simply make a single token, allowing any class to buy the relevant set piece (honestly, I never understood why it wasn't the case). But I would find it counter-productive to allow the signature items of an instance tier to be "buyable". Would quite cheapen the "full set" achievement.

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

footloop

Then I suggest you switch to an "auction + common sense" system :p. If there are items no one else needs, then sharding them because the person who wants ithem is at an arbitrary negative cap seems pretty silly.

 

tedv

"Auction" is a general term for "Variable price determined by potential purchasers". The only auction system that truly shards no loot is one with a minimum bid of 0 points. In that case, if an item drops where everyone who can use it is at zero points, they can still bid 0 and decide the winner with /random.

My guild has a minimum bid of 10 points (where full attendance for a raid week earns between 10 and 15 points) for main spec gear, 2 points for sidegraded main spec (eg. bidding on a piece in the same slot with equal or lower item level), and 0 points for off spec. You are always allowed to place the minimum bid of 10 points even if you have less than that, but you must pass to anyone with more points than you. So people can go negative but generally not for very long.

The basic system a bit more complicated than it needs to be (in my opinion), and I think the minimum bid is a bit too high, but in general it all works out. I believe Aurora's system has a minimum bid of 1, but trials do not accrue points during their trial period. I don't know what GCR uses for their minimum bid. They're all pretty similar though.

 

PSGarak

Any system with hard rules is suspect to some sort of fuckery. Well-designed systems (this is usually a subset of KISS systems) can limit these to a small modicum of edge cases, like "the only druid had negative DKP when a druid-only item dropped." But the point remains that rules, by their nature, try to simplify the aggregate possibility of situations without having seen all of them, and they tend to do so in an imperfect manner (to make an analogy, they are not lossless compression of the probability space). This is why I recomend that any system has some sort of override possibility built-in, so that the implimentation of the system is never counter to the intent of the system when an edge case comes up. The limit of this is loot-council, but an allowing an on-the-spot officer veto or raid veto by supermajority vote can be useful. The most common use of this is "the tank *needs* more gear for the next encounter" and "yes the negative-DKP druid actually should get the druid item" or suchlike. Which type you go for depends on how well your guild knows and trusts each other and their officers... personally if I didn't trust my guild's officers to be fair with loot council I wouldn't be in that guild anyways, but that's just me.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

• Caniki

I don't really see the problem with tier loot being purchased with badges. I'll be running Naxx a whole lot, i'm sure, but if I need a third chest, or for some weird reason the chest I want never drops, then fine, I'll just go buy it. If I end up just accumulating a whole bunch of badges, I'll go buy a mount or something with them.

Do we need another rehash of "my loot/dkp system is better than yours"?

 

Harwin

Is the expectation that *every* loot drop will be purchasable with badges?

If so, it seems that with our DKP system we could just price things to match exactly the badge cost. Yes, it still has all the standard DKP problems, but I just want to avoid a discrepancy where it is cheaper in fixed-cost DKP to buy item A with badges and B with DKP than the reverse.

 

clavarnway

Are they going to implement something so that it checks for the guild's achievement of killing certain bosses before the guild can buy the loot that drops off that boss? Otherwise you can run into situations where a player can buy loot off the endboss with badges before the guild has even killed that boss, tier gear for example to complete the set.

In BC examples:

My guild has to kill Mother before anybody in the guild can buy T6 shoulders with badges, same with Council/legs and Illidan/Chest.

It just seems kinda shifty that a guild can farm the place and buy tier gear from a boss they can't down.

http://sigs.guildlaunch.net/sig.php/1424974uXyta.png

 

Anedris

A lot of the Naxx bosses seem to share loot tables. I'm not sure how prevalent it is, but if Anub'Rekan has a 10% to drop an item and Maexxna has a 50% to drop the same item, it seems a lot less out of place to be able to buy the Maexxna loot from badges (since it also drops from Anub if you're patient or lucky enough to farm him for long enough).

 

• Caniki

I thought this way too this morning, and then I remembered the guild that I was in when the SSO badge vendor opened. That guild was quite happy to just run Karazhan every week over and over again to buy T5 quality gear, so that they could run Karazhan over and over and over again to buy more T5 quality gear. Some people are happy with this. Why prevent them from being happy? How does their taking 5 or 6 months to get gear that you can get in month diminish your happiness at all?

So yeah. Using your example, if a guild wants to farm Najentus -> Gorefiend for months on end and eventually buy T6 chests, by all means, let 'em.

 

Cuer

At this time the only Naxx drops available from emblems are the 4 pieces of tier 7 tokens: tier7-10 hands and chest, and tier7-25 shoulders and legs. The vast majority of items that drop in Naxx (either 10 or 25 man versions) are only available through that raid.

As for the "shifty" aspect of getting gear like this: Since Naxx is the entry level 80 raid (the new Karazhan, as it were) it doesn't seem likely that there's any developer concern about people eventually getting a few pieces of gear without killing the boss from which it drops, by farming the easy Naxx bosses over and over. The stated design is to funnel lots of players through Naxx, to get them geared up to basic level 80 epic gear levels, and set them up to follow the raiding progression patch (10 or 25 man, as they wish). If anything the design promotes that explicitly (again, assuming all of this stays as it is on beta) by letting characters get 2 pieces of tier7-10 without ever setting foot in any raid, with the emblems that drop from heroics. Beyond that, all the starting level 80 epics (from heroics, 10 man Naxx, Exalted reputation, or emblem purchase) are ilevel 200; they clearly want players able to get geared up at that level of gear relatively quickly, and then move on to harder content.

 

kysta

I do not see how this is a new problem, or really a problem at all.

In early BC, it was tailor casters skipping tier pieces in the tailoring slots giving them an edge in DKP. In late BC, it was players with badge epics that are arguable superior or at least equal to equivalent tier pieces saving DKP by not bidding on downgrades. Now we will have players passing on tier pieces because they can buy them with badges, saving DKP.

How is this a problem exactly? If the player in question doesn't buy tier pieces with his badges, what is he buying? BoA alt gear? I think it should be obvious that you *want* your raiders to spend badges on tier gear, given the option, rather than throwing it away on toys for their alts. This isn't a problem, this is a good thing! You want to encourage players to improve their gear through the badges. You want to reward it, perhaps by giving them extra DKP to spend on the non-set pieces. If that is exactly what happens naturally through your DKP system, why would you want to change it?

 

Nethris

Clearly if the entire raid and all officers think a course of action is a bad idea, and it gets followed because "that's the rule," you've got problems. I'm rather surprised that in the situation named, the officers didn't just decide that the negative limit could be exceeded if the other option was sharding the loot. An explicit override built-in to your system does reduce the odds of people bitching that you're changing the rules, although personally as a former raid officer anyone complaining that we should have sharded a piece of loot would be going on my mental list of problem raiders to be dealt with :P


On the subject of tier loot for badges, with them only putting 2 pieces on badges so far per set, if they're smart they could make those 2 be the first ones you get access to, which would pretty much eliminate the problem of getting stuff for badges that you haven't gotten to yet. Or they could make all the tier pieces available for badges, which makes much more sense for being able to fill in loot that doesn't drop, and use the mechanisms they've got in place for the achievement system to track to see if you've ever been present for a kill of a given boss, and require that to buy the tier piece that that boss drops.

 

PSGarak

I assumed that the two pieces on the badge vendor are the easiest to get via normal drops, so that you can't get "more advanced" items by grinding lower-level content. I just realized there's problems with that, because the bosses earlier in the instance get cleared more, so those drops are the ones that you get saturated with anyways. If they're later pieces the badge system counteracts progression saturation nicely, but it does let you substitute progression for grinding.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Roywyn

I think the headpieces drop from Kel'thuzad, are considered the hardest/last to get and are not on the vendor.

This way, getting a full 5-set is still an achievement and requires killing all bosses.
With all set pieces except headgear on vendor, they ensure that everyone with bad loot luck who has been stuck with 3/5 T7 for weeks/months can complete their 4/5 T7 set bonus in case it is essential for progress.
And putting all pieces except one is necessary to ensure that anyone with 3/5 T7 can get their last piece to complete their set.

I'm thinking about DPS on Brutallus without 4T6 or shaman on Twins without 4T6 who have significicant gear disadvantage.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Zurgat

Assuming the tier tokens also drop from bosses, this gives an extra option for the unlucky players who haven't been able to get the tokens they are trying to get. I recall some priests have done KZ for weeks on end and never managed to get their head piece. Even now there's still fairly fierce competition about the head from archimonde on certain classes, while others are already rolling for their third off-spec set.

Having the option to spend badges would ensure there's less of a chance of "never" getting the item. Hopefully it stays this way, though obviously tokens that would normally require you to kill Kel'thuzzad would have to be more expensive.

Perhaps blizzard could set the vendor to check whether you have obtained the "kill kel'thuzzad" achievement, before allowing you to purchase such tokens.

-= Random Ravings - RSS Feed =- Rogue and Hunter stuff here. As well as guides to get you trough your spare time.

 

Akka

I don't want to repeat myself, but I still don't see how putting set on the vendor is the smart way to deal with RNG.
Making all things (or even just "most things") buyable with badges only reward farming, not progression. I don't think that promoting stagnation is a good design. Farming should give second-rate items giving a little hand to get at the first-rate ones, but the latter should be reward for actually managing to improve your place.

If you really want to remove the RNG irritation, again just put all classes on the same token. You still require to kill the boss, but you don't have anymore classes collectionning their third set while others still wait for their drop.

If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !

 

Totemtoter

Is this really a problem? If someone spends 4 months stuck on early bosses of an instance, they are getting a slow trickle of badges to spend. Sure they might eventually get an extra item worth of help that other guilds who were quicker didn't get, but obviously they could use the nudge.

I think a token for all classes only helps the stable, mature guilds. Outside of that, it would probably just cause even more loot drama than already exists.

 

sovelis41

The AQ40 token model of a fixed drop with half of the classes on each token was a nice design feature that allowed guilds to gear up new people in one clear if it came to that. Even the Tier 6 distribution was fair unless you were a guild that got loads and loads of Vanquisher, which was used up quite early on.

One token is a little too vanilla and boring for my tastes, but this is one of those "you can't make everyone happy" scenarios.

Since the switch to 3 token drops in 25mans (I assume this continues in Naxx25?), we haven't seen an incredibly long streak where people have gone without something they need (tier tokens, still 0 mementos). There will always be exceptions, but over a long enough period, everyone will get what they need and then some. Those that were unlucky will have the badge items to fall back on to a degree.

You pay for the whole chair, but you only need the edge.

 

Mideci

Speak for yourself I guess. We needed Vanquisher longer than anything else. Whereas Protector was garbage after 3 weeks. Depends on your raid composition, apparently.

 

Mojofabulous

Thanks for the flood of responses to my question. Separating the tiered and non-tiered dkp tables does appear to be the most elegant solution thus far. Indeed it would be an addition to the dkp admin's job duties..but one that would also eliminate any potential drama over using a loot council type system for the tiered items.

Any further suggestions are welcome and thanks again.


PS. Remember not to confuse the different types of badges as not all gear is purchasable with the same badge. The 10 and 25 man instances drop different badges than do the 5mans. One of the above posts illustrates that point visually with the screenshot shown.

 

Amenemope

The solution I see is to have token dropping bosses also drop a quest item redeemable for a piece of tier gear. The people who like the RNG aspect of boss loot get to be pleasantly surprised when their item drops. Those to whom the RNG has not been kind know that they will eventually get their gear. This preserves the meritocracy of the tier gear system while circumventing the meaningless farming runs that turn raiding into a chore.

 

mek

The 25mans have their own type of badge, but 10 mans share their badge type with Heroics.